Sunday, 18 November 2012

A policeman looks at an unexploded missile fired by an Israeli aircraft in Gaza City, 17 November 2012: photo by Majdi Fathi / APA images

Palestinian mourners carry the bodies of Tahrir Salman and
Mohammed Salman in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, 16
November 2012. The two civilians were killed when an Israeli warplane
attacked a number of civilians who were in the garden of a house
belonging to Ghazi Abed Salman, according to the Palestinian Centre for
Human Rights: photo by Ashraf Amra / APA images

Palestinian youth throw stones at an Israeli military tower during
clashes near Aida refugee camp in the West Bank town of Bethlehem in
protest of Israeli military strikes on Gaza, 15 November 2012: photo by ActiveStills

A damaged home near the Council of Ministers building in Gaza
City, which was completely destroyed during an Israeli airstrike earlier
in the day, 17 November 2012: photo by Anne Paq / ActiveStills

A tank on a flat-bed truck sits at an Israeli gas station on its way to the boundary with Gaza, 17 November 2012: photo by ActiveStills

An explosion and smoke are seen after Israeli air strikes in Gaza City, 17 November 2012: photo by Yasser Gdeeh / Reuters

Two rockets are launched from Gaza City towards Israel, 16 November 2012: photo by Naaman Omar / APA images

Israelis take cover as the Israeli military launches a missile
from the Iron Dome defense missile system designed to intercept and
destroy incoming short-range rockets and artillery shells, south Tel
Aviv, 17 November 2012: photo by Oren Ziv / ActiveStills

Palestinians react to the sound of an Israeli F-16 warplane flying
at low attitude above the ruins of the Civil Department of the Ministry
of Interior building, which was completely destroyed in the morning in
the Gaza City neighborhood of Tal al-Hawa, 17 November 2012: photo by Anne Paq / ActiveStills

According to Haaretz, Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said this
about Israel's attacks on Gaza: "The goal of the operation is to send
Gaza back to the Middle Ages." Let me know if any of the US Sunday talk
shows mention that during their discussions of this
"operation".

Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb? Comes to my mind but ofcourse the innocence has been lost having seen so many bombs dropped all over and the commencement of every new operation being reported in the same vein as the beginning of the Olympic Games World Cups and what have you.

Yes, I do agree that the generalized media overload contributes to a loss of sensation, so that the images, even images of human suffering, become drained of affect (much like emoticons). The result is a dulling of the receptivity, the ability to feel compassion. In this bland state the general population of the West sits inert in a continual bombardment of politically generated pseudo-"information". Because in the West this assault repetitively produces and applies the same false "tit for tat" logic, it may be necessary to peer outside the edges of that box in order to get the slightest glimpse of what is really happening.

"Gilad Sharon, son of the former Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has been arguing in a piece for the Jerusalem Post that Israel must achieve a 'decisive victory', or as he also puts it: 'A Tarzan-like cry that lets the entire jungle know in no uncertain terms just who won, and just who was defeated.'

"He adds:

"'There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

"'Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.'"

Thanks, Tom for taking this on. What you do is a necessary counter-weight to all the “politically generated pseudo-information". That chest thumping by Sharon fils could easily have been lifted, with only a few changes, from one of Mussolini’s speeches in 1930s Italy.